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Show 56 THE CAPTIVE. prize senses and their objects far more than we do. It is a dismal thing for an innocent man to be cooped up within the four walls of a dungeon for life, with only a little glimmer of reflected light coming through the grating, and never to behold the direct light of the sun. But even in that situation the man may study nature : there is that reflected glimmer fading off into the darker tints : there are the different spots and the colours they reflect; and the motes are dancing even in that dim light; and the spider is busy in the corner; and, it may be, that things which a man in the free air would call loathsome are crawling about the floor. But the solitary man can make all these lowly things his kingdom; 1 can claim brotherhood with the spider, the snail, and 1 the lizard; and, if his heart has been true to nature and to man, he will kneel down and thank Heaven ' as fervently for its bounty, when the morning givesj him the first dawning of that streamy light, as if he, beheld the sun rise on the sweetest valley in EngJ land, and could call all that valley his own : and, let but one drop of the bitter waters of remorse for wrong done.fall in the rich man's free and full cup, and he would give the solitary all his wealth for an exchange of feeling. We would consider it a piece of most wanton cruelty to build up the little grating-the dim light to the captive; but even that would not deprive him of the pleasure of nature : even then he might "touch the earth," and, by so touching, his mind would rise up and wrestle with the giant, and he could seize happiness in the dark. It is a common ob .. servation, that blind people are always cheerful; and the fact is nearly as general that they are aU musical. Now, as these are general truths, like all general truths, there is instruction in them; and it is instruction that any one may obtain without the form or in .. tricate preparation of any thing that can be called learning or science. It is delightful to look on the SENSATION IS GENERAL. 57 glowiD:g heavens and the green earth; and as there are few t.hmgs more calculated to afford us pleasure than our stght, s.o there a~e fe':" things that we suffer more by negl~ctmg o.r usmg tmproperly. But from the proverb~al .h3:ppmess of the blind, and their fondness for muste, 1t ts ext.re.mely probable that all nature becomes to the.m as tf 1t were one vast musical instrument. Nor 1s ~here any doubt that sounds convey I to then~ the .n?tlons of form. and distance, in a manner as mtelhgtble to the mmd as th at which those who hav~ the advantage of sight receive throuo-h that medmm. Strange as it may seem too the touch of blind people may be so edncat'ed a~ not o~l):' to ~istin~uish one colour from another, but to dtstmgmsh dtfferent depths of shade in the same colour. . Human perception is a very curious matter; and the dtffcrent senses so co-operate with each other and they are a.ll ~o linked with nature, that it is dif~ fict~lt to say wtthm what limits we could confine that -whtch any one of them mia-ht reveal to us thouo-h d . d b ' b ~e were epnve ?f a.ll th.e _others. It is probable, \ m~ee.d, that sensatwn Itself IS a much more general pn~c1p~e than an~ of those modifications of it which reside m the partteular organs; and that it is really those powers of the body by which we move matter from plac~ ~o place, and change its appearance, that are the ?ngmal sou_rces of all our knowledge of the mechamcal properties of matter. In common language, indeed, we are accustomed to say tha~ we measure visible distance by the eye, and ~he distance of sound by the ear; but it is exce~~ mgly probable, nay, almost certain, that the origm of our knowledge in those cases is in our muscles, our organs of motion; and that even in the case of the eye itself, which is the organ that we ca~ b~st unde.rstand, ~nd most nearly imitated by artl.fict~l ~ontnvances, It is the muscular action by whteh It IS .adapted to different distances, and not the dP-gree of bght, or the magnitude, or inu~nsity of the |